


the sun, the eye

by wegotodecember (imaginedecember)



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Emotional Hurt/Trauma, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Natural Disasters, Pre-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2019-12-26 18:50:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18288152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginedecember/pseuds/wegotodecember
Summary: Arthur has been through a lot.Lost Hosea to a tornado, had gotten caught in Dutch's lies, had fallen hard for John, had lost his weather box and is slowly dying without its essence, without its fuel to power his abilities. And had done something horrible masked as a choice.And here he is again, at the beginning of a summer storm, about to be hit all over again.





	the sun, the eye

**Author's Note:**

> **Please Heed Tag Warnings:**
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> Although the **child abuse is implied** , it will include a reference to Arthur's abusive, alcoholic father, as well as the psychological and verbal abuse from Dutch. There will, of course, be fallout from each that Arthur tries to work through. 
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> I believe that this work is a **working of emotional issues/trauma and mental health issues** as well as **referenced minor character death** with Hosea's death being in the game and in this fic as well. That death happened before the fic, however.
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> This work is also a **Modern AU** with references to political issues involving not so good governments.
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> Arthur's abilities in the game will be mentioned with the addition of one more that I have made up called Mother Eye. Essentially, Arthur can sense auras, both in Nature and in human nature. 
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> Other than that, read safely and enjoy! <3.

Sorrow found me when I was young

Sorrow waited, sorrow won

Sorrow, they put me on the pill

It's in my honey, it's in my milk

Don't leave my hyper heart alone on the water

Cover me in rag and bone sympathy

Cause I don't wanna get over you I don't wanna get over you

Sorrow's my body on the waves

Sorrow's a girl inside my cake

I live in a city sorrow built

It's in my honey, it's in my milk

-Sorrow by The National

+

The motel loomed as an extension of the pot holed two lane road and rose like a forbidden fruit.

The diner across the street was a moldy spot on said forbidden fruit. Too rotten even for a worm or someone who needn’t not care for calories but for consumption only. 

And all the traffic lights flickered. If you got near it on a green when it flickered, you’d better pray it wasn’t a stale light, that you wouldn’t be gushing red out your body, and you wouldn’t be caught in twisted metal. 

And, hell, if you were real lucky, you could make it across town and out in about five minutes. And that’s the biggest ‘if’ there ever was.

It really made Arthur wonder why he gave such a damn about the spinning storm just a few miles out from the town.

Who would even notice if it was wiped off the map?

But there were people in the town’s web, caught as they were to wander the grass line, to get dizzy on forgotten railroad tracks, to dare to jump over the potholes carved into a road so worthless it might as well be nonexistent, to sleep and lay your dreams to dust in abandoned factories blown out and looming like a flower caught in the reality of wilting and the idealistic yearning to bloom. 

Yes. People. 

Arthur was a sucker for such a thing, loathe he be to admit it.

Hell, it had been his downfall, his own thing that old Dutch knew just how to twist for his gain.

God, Arthur was a terrible man, a worse fool.

And a sucker for people.

Like he said, a worse fool.

Still.

Maybe he needed to do it to atone for the permanent, invisible blood stains on his hands. Maybe he needed to do it to throw a blanket over all the bad things he’d done. Maybe he needed to do it because Hosea would’ve been proud. Maybe it was to stick it to old man Dutch, tell him to fuck off with the grace and warmth in his actions, that, hell, maybe caring for people wasn’t some sick sign of weakness but a damn wholesome thing, a heavenly necessity, a light in the dark.

Arthur sucked on his cigarette, watching the amber fire flicker on the end coerce him in for another.

A light in the dark.

A light-.

Arthur whirred the hand crack siren to life. 

He settled his feet on shaking Earth in the middle of the second intersection in town. The traffic lights above him flickered, got caught in lightning and then went out completely.

Blinked, gone.

Beeps. Cars honked at him, getting lost in the rumbles of thunder, in the misty warnings that dripped from the sky.

Some cars even revved at him. Some just kept going 30 miles above the speed limit and whizzed past him, swerving at the last possible moment.

But still, Arthur stood and cranked and cranked and wailed the siren at its harshest, at its loudest.

And he watched the storm spin before him, down the road. 

The clouds were building, towering. Black water ones capable of lifting concrete blocks, of sending wood through brick, of ending lives in a single blink, in the mere second it took to slam your hand on the car horn.

Arthur grimaced and spat out his cigarette.

He squashed it and sighed.

And, then, finally, finally, some people got out of their cars and ran for it. Arthur shouted over their panic, “Get in a ditch or hell-.” He glanced around him. Some houses had their doors wide open, begging for people to get in quick, to use their homes as shelters. Sometimes small towns surprised him.

They either shot you on sight or brought you in, either in wholesomeness or under the guise of it. At this point, a gun shot would be better then getting whipped up by one of those spinning devil things and by-.

A woman stumbled into him. 

Arthur lugged the hand crack around, moving the strap until it settled on his back. The familiar weight. His body bowed to it, moved around it as if it was merely a feather. A gun or a siren on his back. Hm, did they really mean two completely different things?

Arthur grabbed the woman by her arms, kept her still in front of him. Her eyes were so wild, rotating about, and her mouth was chittering, making up for the silence in the birds. 

He shushed her, lessened her spookness, and said, soft, slow, a meandering pace despite the blueness tone to the world that was screaming at Arthur the burning, bustling need to run that was pulsating inside them and then out in between them and all around them. “C’mon, that house right there. Doors open. Don’t think. Just go.” He tacked on with a push to her body to get her going, “Find a bathtub or a closet. And get something for your head! C’mon, go!” 

He screamed it over the coming roar that rumbled like a train.

She stumbled but she ran.

Arthur watched her trembling body go for the house and inside.

He breathed easy, deep.

Then, raised the siren and cranked it just a few final times. Dared a dance between the coming storm and the need to save.

Watched the streets, the abandoned cars that rumbled or remained in a mummified silence. 

Not a single soul.

Or, hell, he hoped.

But then, there, tipping and tripping from the horizon, was something that tasted like a rotten forbidden fruit.

Arthur gathered up his spit, lobbed it at the pavement, and cursed its congealment. 

God fucking damn it.

He slung the siren around to stay on his back and his toes curled at the back and forth his brain was doing. Should he head towards the ghost he thought he’d never see again? Or should he leave, turn away forever?

John Marston was born and bred to run.

Arthur Morgan wasn’t. 

Although a coward was just the same as a fool.

So of course he ran towards the storm.

The rain was pouring like needles now. It coated his eyelashes and blinded his vision. He thanked his mother Earth for giving him the burning need to chop his hair off. It would’ve been soaked worse, making him cold. His jacket was doing a hell of a good job of that all on its own.

He hunched in, wrapping his arms around him as he danced and ran through the barrage of rain. He heard dins and shatters and knew hail was gonna roar like hell on his body and he didn’t know if he was gonna make it in time to get to this stupid fucking idiot of his but there, there, John, John, John-.

“Knew that siren could only be yours!” John screamed it over the roar and Arthur rolled his eyes because John would always find room to grind his gears.

Sighing, Arthur wrapped his arms around John’s form. He was small and thin, thinner than he was before that was for sure. Hell, had it been only a season since their sudden end? It was so easy now, as it had always truly been, to mold him to his body and to maneuver them both towards the diner. It was the closest thing, quite unfortunately. 

Also quite unfortunately was John’s lack of understanding when it came to personal space and how the past can mar the space between reunion and forgetting that the other existed. 

Dug his wet face into Arthur’s neck, made him shiver, made him curse. But still held on to John tighter as the wind whipped up, as it howled like a wolf, as John nestled in close. Warm. John was always warm. Arthur never would’ve been able to forget something like that.

And annoying.

A piece of shit.

As John nibbled Arthur’s collarbone and teased t-shirt collar hidden skin with the tip of his warm, wet tongue. It was molten lava straight to Arthur’s core. It was warmth. It was spilling lanterns. It was hot sun right before a summer storm. It was a wildness that far away made the sound of a soaring bird crash through Arthur’s mind. 

Arthur’s right hand hovered over John’s head, caught in wanting to smack him and needing to bring him in closer.

Because this wasn’t a step.

This was a death sentence.

And, hell, Arthur sealed the start of it when his hovering right hand decided, in his heart’s wish, and pulled John in closer. Molded his hand on the boy’s head and petted him, tangled bigger and calloused fingers through the wet, rat’s mess, and paused there, right before the door to the diner, and kissed the top of John’s head.

The pause felt like eternity. 

Being pelted with rain. Drenched in the messy, crying sky. Feeling black and gray and somber and full of pot holes and no sidewalks, no directions, and flickering with barely working lights.

Feeling his heart pounding, throbbing, gushing.

John lifted his head.

Amber, molten. Like the skin of the deer that danced in Arthur’s mind. Like the mud that got spun up and squished after a storm. Like cave walls, running your hands over the bumps and the elements of Earth’s core. 

Like something mixed up, all past and present and future.

Arthur cradled John’s jaw in his head, kept that amber gaze on him. Wanted, needed something that-.

Lightning.

It flashed behind them but was too close. Yes, too close, too-.

“C’mon, let’s get inside before we get cooked.” Arthur said it but it sounded so distant, like a man saying it a thousand miles away, a full on season away. 

And John nodded, something in his eyes glimmering and his smile followed suit. Damn it. Arthur was never good at covering his weaknesses around John. All of his barriers seemed to melt around the younger man and all it took was for John to come in close, to kiss all the sensitive bits of him, and make him do things he’d never do.

Like listen to a born and bred Dutch’s boy. 

Let go of John completely, stormed in thundering steps to the diner. Whipped the door open and didn’t hold it for John. Let it nearly slam into him. Arthur wished it had drowned out John’s boasting laughter but it didn’t.

Arthur rubbed his ears. God it hurt. The needling sound of it. How it teased him. How, well. Arthur adjusted his pants pointedly away from John’s gaze. But still, despite how much Arthur tried to hide it, John seemed to know everything for the laugher got somehow louder and John was even pointing at him. 

Warm. Arthur’s cheeks were warm. And so were his damn ears. He scrubbed at both, grumbling, before he sat in a pissed off heap in a diner seat.

There weren’t no one around and maybe they were hiding in the freezer or in the back.

Arthur knew that they should also be back there with them but when Arthur focused back on the spinning, roaring world outside, he zeroed in on the tornado’s path.

She was tearing down the grass and abandoned buildings, kissed the motel across the street, but curled away from it. She found her new path, swinging further to the West and away from the town that Arthur had warned.

Sometimes warnings were there for just in case. Sometimes warnings were there because it was happening and it was real.

Either way, warnings were needed.

It was a shame that the government had deemed such a vital necessity unworthy, just the same as kindness, as knowledge, as things that’d dispute and uncover their moldy cancerous desire for money. 

So, here, Arthur was in another unnamed town, roaring his sirens for them because whoever ran their town, their state, didn’t give enough of a shit about them.

And Arthur would be having an easier time with said warnings if someone hadn’t stolen his weather box.

Which said person was a hundred and ten percent sitting in front of him and shouting for a waitress. 

Arthur sighed. He eased John’s shouting with a calmer, softer, “Storm’s over guys. Ain’t no tornado so you’re safe to come out.”

John glanced at him, stuck his tongue out. Arthur chomped his teeth, dining to bit such a dangerous thing off. Such an action, though, of course, only made John giggle and preen.

Arthur sighed, and angled his body away from the boy. He folded his hands on the table but kept his eyes on the window, watched people emerge from houses and ditches to get in their cars and head out. Some looked around as if they were gonna meet the person who had warned them but no such luck. 

A ghost.

A ghost.

A-.

“Two milkshakes. Old grumps over here wants vanilla. He’s boring and old and stupid. Oh! Do you have Oreo?” A pause. “Yes, that please. And fries! Coffee, too, in case grumps gets a case of the sleepies. Thank you, sweetheart.” 

Arthur rolled his eyes, said, “Why, isn’t he just worth a few couple a bucks more than the average idiot on the streets.” Because John was oh so kind to consider his old man-ness to get him some coffee too. God.

He clicked his jaw and held back all of the words that threatened to tumble after but John busted the dam right open when he grabbed for Arthur’s hands. Folded his warmth over Arthur’s skin and said so quietly, something Arthur wasn’t sure he was capable of unless he was whispering it into his skin on a motel bed, against a wall, in a car, on a-.

“Sorry I never gave back your…whaddya call it?”

“My weather box.”

“Yeah, that. Sorry, I-.”

Whatever bullshit would’ve came after got drowned out as the waitress clicked on over and set the coffee down in front of Arthur. In a blink, Arthur saw her one thumb painted in bursting green and yellow specks, of spring, of-.

The plate of fries she set down next dinged against the chipped cup. The milkshakes sloshed in their plastic prison as she set them both in front of John. Paused then scooched the vanilla one next to the coffee. 

“Thanks, miss. The old man says it too.”

The jeer made her laugh so bubbly and poppy like sticky liquid spinning and shooting out of a bubble wand. Swinging it in the summer. Wishing for it in the winter. 

Losing it in spring.

“You two kids enjoy your meal!” She gave a wink and was gone in a wisp. Just as the clicks started up again, Arthur ground out in a sharp, rumbling tone, “Was that all you came here for?” 

John withdrew his touch.

Arthur bit back a beg, a plea. 

He watched as the younger male grabbed the plate of fries until it was in front of him, not Arthur, and happily went to munching on them, and dipping some in Arthur’s vanilla shake.

Arthur didn’t even blink. He simply sipped at the now slightly salty vanilla shake in between pauses in John’s actions. Even messed around with John’s Oreo shake, dipping his thumb into the surprise addition of toppings on top of the globs of vanilla and Oreo. A strange mix of caramel, fudge, and store bought, halfway crusted with frost, whipped cream. He sucked all of it off, tasted salt from his skin beneath it, like the salty fries in his vanilla shake. In retaliation, John switched to his own shake, digging out an Oreo and chewing on that.

Just a back and forth lulling dance. 

The wind didn’t howl no more.

The sun was peaking through black water, dashing the clouds away with its heat, with the blueness that wished to swim above them again.

Birds chittered and chattered and sung and gossiped with the others and they flew and they soared and they-.

Arthur sipped his coffee. Black. Bitter. Swallowed it hard. Then said, pointedly, “Well, whatever in the Hell you came here for doesn’t matter. What matters is my weather box.”

John hummed as if there was a choice to be made here. He tapped a fry against his lips, sucked it in and munched. Chewed and chewed then asked, “Been trying to figure out how you use it.” Wandered out loud just as Arthur pushed the vanilla milkshake in between them so they could make their strange dance a little easier, “It told me you were here, though. That I know for sure. Wouldn’t stop its shaking and wouldn’t even fucking think of opening neither ‘till I got here.” Dipped a fry in, curled it and hooked it around a chuck of blurred up ice. Swirled and swirled and-.

Arthur ripped the milkshake away.

The fry dripped on to a chip in the table. 

Arthur’s eyes were ice as he consumed John with it. And now it was Arthur’s turn to smile as John shivered, as he hunched in at Arthur’s gaze. 

Arthur said, strong, sure, “You give me my weather box back. Then you leave. That’s it.”

But sharing the milkshake said otherwise.

But holding on to John, letting him lick his neck said otherwise.

But saving John in the storm, tornado or not, said otherwise.

But telling John in some random motel’s bathroom how he felt and then leaving after it’s stinging thud said otherwise.

And Arthur…

Fool.

A goddamn fool.

He squeezed his eyes shut and covered them with his hands. He pulled his hands down in a slow drag and cursed himself.

Forgot somehow how screwed up he got around John. 

Forgot that his nature was to please, that he was just there to exist in the world as a tool to be used. Forgot that, in John’s arms, maybe all these things about him weren’t really him at all, but something molded and reeking. 

Forgot that, maybe there was something more to Arthur Morgan than the shattered mirror, the siren he held, the weather box he sorely missed and needed. That maybe there was a heart and soul in his lumbering meat box that hadn’t been ripped apart by Hosea’s death, that hadn’t been tainted by Dutch’s conditional praise. Run the conditioner through your hair. Smell its sweet scent. Make a routine of it. But don’t look in the mirror. Don’t pay attention to the bumps on your skin where the conditional sweetness had irritated the cells, had sunk in, and then down to the red, throbbing muscle you forgot was yours and not someone else’s. 

Change conditioners. 

God, it seems so simple when put like that, huh?

Could it be? Could it-?

John.

In Arthur’s meandering lull, John had sat up, leaned over the table, and curled a hand, warm and small with narrow, long fingers, so warm and decisive they were, to roll and massage into the back of Arthur’s neck with needle point accuracy. Run the needle through the skin cells, pull it back out, then in, out and in, in and out until it’s all sewn together, until you can’t help but yearn for what’s been threaded so delicately in.

God.

A sharp intake of breath tumbled out before Arthur could stop it. And John shoved his winning smile into Arthur’s cheek, kissed the warming skin there, and crackled out in cracks of oozing amber, gaze and hands and lips so warm on him, “Can’t say it here. How about that motel?”

Diners weren’t akin to private conversations.

And if there was a bed, they were more than likely to chase old patterns and fuck until they stopped yearning to have the private conversation altogether. 

But John wasn’t gonna win this time. 

Arthur was older now, torn apart now.

Had tasted what it had felt to make a choice as your own and not as a tool.

He didn’t readily believe in idealistic proclamations and sweet, sticky promises that were rotted beneath the surface anymore.

This world ain’t a utopia.

It was a never-ending storm.

And maybe he was indeed more than a pleasing tool to mold.

Arthur dared it. He reached for that hair, gave in to the yearning that was pulsing in bone and muscle, and grasped at the strands that cascaded down around him and pulled but not hard. Just a gentle tug forwards and John startled but went so willingly, so sweetly. He sank into Arthur, thinking he had won, but Arthur shattered that with a honey coated guttural, “Weather box first.”

And it was John’s turn to melt under him, to give in, to shiver and gasp and moan so shivery and soft. A peeling away whisper to reveal the throbbing heart underneath.

Arthur held back a bursting smile. Instead he soothingly ran his hands through a few tangles then tapped against John’s chest. Once was enough to get the boy to listen and Arthur’s mouth dripped out, “Good boy”. The blush on John’s cheeks was a far more delicious red. A better thing to gush than the boy’s guts on the pavement. 

Arthur didn’t even have to ask again. John listened, for once. He dug around in his coat pockets, forgetting which one it went in which really made Arthur’s jaw tighten. But then, there, in an inside pocket, tucked in close to John’s warmth, his heart, was the weather box.

To the passing eye, it’d look like a simple wooden box, no decorations, no special, ornate latch, that’d hold anything that could fit. It didn’t sparkle. It didn’t rumble. It didn’t chitter. And it didn’t soar.

Just plain wood with notches in its grain that danced between differing shades of Earth. The lock was molded and reformed out of the buckle that had marred and bruised Arthur’s skin plenty a time before his old man fell hard to the bottle and never got back up again. Good thing that was. Even better that Arthur had twisted that man’s power over him into something so sweet and alluring and true and yet so fierce and so kind. Nature. Arthur’s true mother, true father. Well. Next to Hosea. 

He smoothed his thumb over the metal buckle. But he held back opening it. Instead, he tucked it into his jacket and stood. Threw a few hundreds down on the table and walked out.

Skittering steps caught up to him easily as he dodged speeding cars and headed straight for the motel. 

Since John was just a bundle of old parts that wouldn’t die hard, he went to the room numbered 23. When John slid the key in the lock, it was Arthur’s turn to laugh. He slapped his hand on John’s back, startling him into bolting into the room. “Oh, Johnny, you never learn nor change, huh?”

John’s grumbling got echoed in the bathroom as he slipped inside the grimy room and slammed the door shut. 

Arthur shook his head and flopped on to the bed. He teased to cover up the haunting echo of that slamming door, “Gonna miss how this thing works if you’re just gonna go and pout in the bathroom.”

The door got thrown open and Arthur chuckled. He glanced up at John, at the amber hardened in those eyes of his. John grumbled, “Was checking for spiders.”

Arthur raised an eyebrow at the clear excuse. He teased, “Had to shut the door, huh?” 

John shoved his wet jacket off and let it land with a smack on the carpet. He covered his chest with his crossed arms and plopped next to Arthur on the one bed. They swung a bit into each other for a half beat before Arthur cleared his throat and focused back on the box. Of course, John was still so wolf like, inching in and defeating Arthur as soon as a single fraction of a wall was cracked. He refused Arthur, leaned back into him and coaxed and wiggled and squirmed.

“Fucking hell, John,” Arthur bit out before wrapping his arms around the younger male and calming that rapidness in him. John hummed, content in this little win, and tapped the box. Arthur snapped back to it, shaking his head.

He tossed the feel of metal out his mental space and hurried to unlock it.

Out it burst a sentience.

And Arthur relaxed into it.

John moved a bit, watching Arthur so intently. And Arthur let his gaze bore into him, let everything go as all his recesses came back to him.

He had been getting too depleted, had been driving and going on the barest of dregs. A season of rebirth, of spring, spent slowly dying.

His powers sung now, so sweetly in harmony.

Switched blue – Mother eye – to red – Dead eye – to green – Eagle eye. 

“God.” He rubbed his eyes. They were sore and red. The feeling of all them coming back had felt good at first but now he was exhausted by their return. Sapped his energy it seemed with all of them roaring back to life so suddenly and after so long of time.

He hadn’t had them all at full capacity since-. 

John snuck fingers like pin pricking heaters up Arthur’s shirt and laid flat on his stomach. And Arthur reeled into him, met John’s touch with one of his own. Snuck his hands up John’s shirt and held him up by his ribs. John breathed against his touch. In. Out. Out. In

And John teased and teased his fingers up, tapping.

Arthur listened.

He rid himself of his jacket. Threw it somewhere towards the door. 

And fell back on the bed. Dizzy with it all as John followed. 

John straddled his hips.

Arthur’s hands smoothed down his skin to hold the bone, to dig bruises in.

And John bent, wilted over him, hair like cascading petals. Encasing Arthur in. Holding him down. 

Arthur’s eyes were black holes, switching from a world tinted in summer blue that told him that the waves of John undulating on top of him were warm and soft and happy but a bit rotten by fear, afraid of what Arthur didn’t want to know. So, he switched to red and oranges like ending sunsets. It pinpointed John’s heart, crossed an ‘x’ there, and Arthur smoothed his left thumb over the thuds. Switched to green and smiled when he saw birds dancing on the metal railing outside the only window that was just about covered with the moth bitten rotten orange curtain. 

Molded and curdled and falling back into old patterns as easy as taking in one breath then the next.

And Arthur was drowning in it. In the pleases and the pleads and the be goods, the-, god the be good son c'mon, why can't you be good, why can’t you shoot these folks for me, c’mon so what if they’d be fatherless, it’s about the money, the money, c’mon you’re dumb, a fool, all you is is a perfectly molded tool. 

You thought you had gotten strong, that you had won but when grief and tragedy and pain and sickness come in, oh, baby, it’s chronic. You can heal all you want but it’ll lurk.

You’ll turn the motel television on and see a movie that Hosea would’ve loved.

You’ll turn to the wrong channel to get away from the movie and land on some opera music and be reminded of how Dutch knew to curl his words for a verbal hit just as the signer got to the loudest, highest chord. 

You’ll go for your weather box, wishing for Nature to salve your wounds, but you’ll have to open it with the buckle that beat you black and blue.

You’ll lay back on the bed in the dizziness of it and be reminded that in many of these threads, all the same they seemed despite the different places, blurring together now, you had shared and fell in molten heat with John next to you, showing him all the private, dusty spots in your worn out heart. 

In the pulses.

In the forget me nots and the remembrances. 

Grief and tragedy and pain and sicknesses will always lurk.

In all that healing, they’ll just hit less hard.

But they’ll always be in you.

All you are. Who are you but a man who needs to please because that’s all your worth. Who would stick around to get to know the man uttering the pleas? How dare you think that it’s safe to speak, that your words even matter? Appease, appease, please, please like it’s engrained within you. Don’t have muscle and veins and rushing blood and bones nor a throbbing mind and a heart and a soul. No. You have pleases and that’s it. The only thing you can say, do, and think and-.

Cold. 

Arthur was cold.

He blinked.

He shivered.

The world was swimmy and dreamy, cascading in waves around him.

Something dark swimming up from his heart.

Something to the dreams he always had when he forced himself to blink to sleep, to remember such a thing.

Something in the cob webbed corners of his brain.

Get a duster honey, we're finally gonna go diving.

Diving and crashing and sinking and-.

John somewhere there, rising above the surface, holding out his hand. And Arthur grabbed. He yanked. Because John was warm and was asking him to-. John wanted him to-. Please, please-.

"God Arthur. We gotta talk about this. I shouldn’t’ve allowed it, let you just-. Leave. I can’t-." Croaky, letting the dam go, “What’s happening, Arthur? C’mon, not like last time. Please.”

No talking was bad.

Talking was-.

Arthur reeled back, prepared for it.

Hunched in away, turned towards the sheets and rested his forehead there, closed his eyes and breathed in musty sheets that were maybe once upon washed.

And, then, John now, warm in tone took his warm hands away, let Arthur turn away, and Arthur whimpered. He squeezed his eyes tighter as if he kept going, kept pushing, they’d burst and it’d be over. Sightless. Please-less. And, god, he begged not for the duster, not for the release but an end.

John, then, in whispers and easy, coaxing, enveloping tendrils, "Easy now.” A spooked animal dashing between the tree line, becoming one with the gray shadows, the spinning black water clouds above. Into the darkness. Always dashing away from the slightest beam of light. Said, like the light, like the sun, “Ain't gonna hit you. I'm right here. But I ain't gonna hit you. God Arthur I...whoever did this to you I'll kill him. I'll-."

And John’s words were sweet, so boggling in its confusion, and so lost in the need to brace and the need to embrace that Arthur coughed up a web and let it land dusty and overgrown and moldy and musty between them, "Dutch."

Turned even more into himself. 

Stupid, stupid, fool, fool.

Kicked the weather box off the bed.

Peaked one eye open to watch it tumble and crash shut. 

Rolled right off the bed to chase it.

Landed hard and in a grumbling heap.

John’s scrambling as he followed him, as he choked on a growl and a gasp. John was gonna do it. He was gonna-. "Dutch?"

It seemed to be the duster that was needed.

Arthur’s brain latched on to the man that had built upon the cobwebs there since childhood. 

Spitting it out.

John’s touch.

His lack of hits. 

And somewhere in the midst of it, as the duster did its work, Arthur found his skin, found his hands again and placed them on his sticky cheeks, the flooded threads of his t-shirt collar. He yanked at the collar and wiped at his eyes, kept the fabric there, cool and wet against his aching red eyes.

Cold.

Arthur was cold.

He pried his eyes open and looked around him.

He was leaning against a dirty mattress soaked in with all of human sin. Grimacing, he scooted backwards on itchy carpet made of patchwork colors and fabrics. He skimmed his hands along the itchiness and cursed when the pin pricks dug into callouses and scars and invisible but permanent blood stains. 

Gripped the threads then released as he scooted further enough away from the bed to peak out past it and to his left.

John.

John was kneeling on the carpet. His shirt was ruffled from when Arthur had snuck his hands under. Arthur licked his lips in remembrance then frowned, all curdled and rotten at what he had done, at how he had given John nothing but his tears, all his issues and hurts. 

He stared and stared at John. The younger male’s lean body quivered and hunched over, bracing almost for Arthur to bolt right out the damn door. His hair was cascading down over his shoulders and Arthur still would forever yearn to yank the strands, remembered now how it had felt to be enveloped by their soft yet ratty nature at the diner, like cracks in perfect Earth, like spines of soft leaves spilling from gushing red petals. 

Soft. Warm. 

John.

Arthur blinked. Said the only thing he could muster, “Sorry.”

Just like John at the diner.

As if sorry could hold and explain it all.

John startled into action. Crawled across the carpet on his knees. Scritch scratch. Arthur’s hands grabbed the carpet and felt the same scritch scratch. Equal. Together now.

The duster hit a hard spot and Arthur met John there, in the middle, reached for him with a sudden and mad fervor. Gushing red. Throbbing soul and mind and heart. 

Arthur gasped in lungfuls of it as he grabbed for John just as he did in the storm. Met heated skin and goosebumps and knobs in spine as John bowed into him. John laid his head in the crook between Arthur’s neck and shoulder and there was a wetness there that was startling. And John’s hands skittered along Arthur’s back and Arthur gasped for even through flimsy threads, the heat was practically a sun burn as those hands, nimble and thin and gorgeous and perfect found his neck and held.

Arthur wrapped his own arms around John, right underneath his arm pits, and kept him so close, kept him there with him. Flattened hands on t-shirt covered skin and felt every breath John took. Real. Tangible. 

John, then, in a harsh loudness that wasn’t deserving of such a private revelation, “I knew something about you was different.” Fingers tapped against Arthur’s neck then curled into a piece of hair. Tangled and tangled and fought and found and-. “Knew something had happened. There’s a war in your head, Arthur.” John laughed, awkward now, the sound getting smushed in between fabric and the skin of Arthur’s cheek.

Arthur’s hands slipped on John’s back and moved to hold him up by his ribs, holding him like this kept John too close but something in Arthur yearned and howled for it and Arthur couldn’t stop it. 

As soon as John came back, Arthur knew that he wouldn’t be able to fight his heart’s display, his soul’s release, his brain handing John his nightmares, his fears, all his issues and more. 

Knew this.

Knew it as soon as he had seen John tripping on the horizon to greet him in a roaring storm as if he had never left at all.

Tried to fight it.

Got lost in the return of his weather box, in the spinning senses that it gave him, all of them focusing on John. The scent of John, his touch, in letting this man have all his pleases, his admiration as if there wasn’t something rotten and lurking beneath the surface, as if Arthur hadn’t been responding to what he had desired but what he had been conditioned for.

Had he ever desired John at all?

Had John ever desired him?

God, no, had swum too far down, had lost himself in the idea that he had done something wrong to make John leave, to take his weather box. Had lost himself in the fake fervor of getting stronger. 

But he hadn’t gotten stronger. He had just gotten blinder. 

But now, he was putting words to it, was gathering everything up and making sense of it. Really paying attention now.

He wasn’t that kinda man anymore.

He’d name it what Dutch couldn’t’ve.

Abuse.

Arthur nuzzled John’s neck. John giggled but Arthur kept going, yearning for the kid to get the hint and finally he did. 

Met Arthur’s eyes. There. There was that amber. Sweet, stable Earth. Fire sun. Spilling and bursting. 

Arthur let John watch him curiously as he responded as he should’ve from the damn beginning. “Kinda learned the hard way how Dutch was an asshole.”

John rolled his eyes. “Took you long enough.”

Remembered now their last few moments together, grasped and grappled together. It came in a burst, in a-.

+

“You what?”

In some other unknown, unnamed motel, in the nearing border to spring, Arthur had said it and John wasn’t believing him.

John shut off the shower.

“You always talk a big talk when the water’s running.” 

John had left the door open.

Arthur got a bit dizzy in the blurring steam, trying his best to catch John somewhere in the fog. 

And John was, of course, right, because it was always easier to confess when it could be immediately drowned out.

Brave. 

Was he brave?

Arthur slipped off the bed. He was shirtless. The motel air was sticky and humid. Air conditioning wasn’t a thing such a place could muster. Maybe in the lobby where the owner would be but not with the guests. 

And it was humid outside too.

Nature was gathering her moisture to spin a storm.

Had been too hot but now was getting colder as the cold air from the North rushed in to push the hot, unstable air from the South up and over.

Spin and spin an eye that eased and meandered across the states.

The details were easy to think about.

Arthur could get lost in them and not think about the steps he was taking to the bathroom.

But here he was.

Digging his bare toes in the line of carpet before it switched to bathroom tile. He hovered there, in that boundary and mumbled, “’M leaving, John.” He coughed, something heart shaped getting lodged in his throat. “’M not much of a Dutch’s whipping boy no more. There’s too much-.” He curled his hands and looked at the skin thinking he’d see blood there but there was none. He squeezed his fists tight and held them at his side. His jaw clicked and held in time with the squeezes. “I’m sick of us robbing people after a storm rolls through. That’s not-. This isn’t-.” He ran a hand through his hair then down to his face. Then, turned, and slammed his hands into the door jamb. He rested his forehead there and breathed and pulsed out, “My powers. These…things in me…they’re for good not for robbing folks who already don’t got much and then leaving them to die in the aftermath. That’s not-.” Slammed. Slammed. Slammed. To the tune of a shotgun blast to a father’s head, leaving the children fatherless, penniless. Yes. Slammed. Slammed. Slammed. To the tune of Dutch’s words as the shotgun got shoved into Arthur’s hands. C’mon, be my good boy, my good tool, and shoot this good for nothing bitch. Yes, –. “That’s not me.” Whipped around to see-.

John.

He was hunched over the sink. His fingers were swirling and chasing the water that was dripping from a leaky faucet and slinking down the drain. His hair cascaded down his barely dry skin. 

Through the barrier, Arthur couldn’t see what he was doing to him.

Maybe that made it a bit easier to say so bitter and cracked, in the sublimity of a looming mountain where awful means full of awe, rising now, bursting endlessly forth a final choice, one that was all his own, “I’m not sticking around for another dead body.” 

Turned away from that room.

Slipped his t-shirt on. And opened the door to the motel room. It creaked just as the bathroom door slammed shut. 

It was an answer enough for Arthur.

And it pained him. It felt like gushing. It felt like a river digging craters in Earth as it ceaselessly pounded and roared along to meet the rising mountain whose icy precipices and caverns loomed in a luring call. 

Squeezed his eyes shut to stop the river from bursting the dam.

Got on his motorcycle, revved it to life, and headed for an area soon to be bitten by a storm.

Got so lost, so forgetful in his actions, in the questionability of it all, in the loss of John, somehow harder to swallow than if he was actually dead like Hosea, that he had forgotten his weather box.

Forgotten, though?

Arthur had always wondered if some part of him had left it on purpose.

+

But that was neither here nor there.

What was here now was this.

Another motel room.

Another nameless town.

And Arthur’s weather box and John returned to him.

Curiosity gnawed a hole in Arthur’s heart and since this seemed to be an opening of a cavern with many twists and turns and ways to get lost, Arthur listened to the bite and asked, “Did you…did you get out? Like I had?”

Because John had said…yeah, he had said that he had taken long enough to realize Dutch’s nature so what made John stick around if John had known? What had made John so scared and so stupid to not let Arthur know sooner? 

The bite got bitter. The bite got harder to swallow. “Why in the Hell didn’t you care to show me who Dutch was earlier, John?”

John rolled his eyes. “I didn’t know about him, asshole. You just…you get blind and you get stupid and he-. He was shelter, y’know? Maybe once upon a time a father figure but I…” Something in the amber flashed, hardened. Arthur watched it spin, watched it-. “After you left, then I got it. He tried to make me into his next stupid tool. And I realized you were right. It…you leaving opened up a lot.”

That…Arthur dared it. He reached for John and his body lessened its tension when John let him, when John met him even, and curled back into his chest. Warm. There. Real. Arthur wrapped his arms around him and hummed, soft, sweet, when John clambered up to kiss him. Off center. Strange. Then sliding, easy now, into past mechanizations that re-burst full to life, slotting their lips into place and moving together. John didn’t let the sweetness drip down and last. He sucked it all down, licked the seam of Arthur’s lips and Arthur was lucky that he knew to open his mouth immediately before John bit his lips too red, too swollen in retaliation.

And, there, there. John’s tongue met his and tangled. Warm. Heady and pulsing and wet. Arthur couldn’t stop it, wouldn’t ever want to. He whimpered into the kiss, letting John wild him into submission, turn him pretty and molten.

Rested his back against the mattress and let John clamber into his lap. John, rising now above, hands shoving fast and hard and yanking in Arthur’s cropped hair and when that wasn’t long enough, ripping and pulling at Arthur’s shirt. And all the while, dipping and diving his tongue all in Arthur’s mouth and claiming. 

Then, ripped apart, panting. John licked his spit caked lips, smiling with gushing red lips just as a bird chittered and chattered to its partner outside the motel window.

In its song, in this picture of John back to him, Arthur coaxed the next words out with bites on John’s tilted neck. “God, Arthur, just-. Too good. Too kind.” A harsher bite and a roll of Arthur’s tongue.

“Nah, not good, not kind.”

John’s fingers tugged extra hard on a piece of hair and Arthur growled. 

“Shut up. Supposed to be learning, right? Well learn this.” John cradled Arthur’s jaw, held him there, suspended in John’s gaze that was burning alight with something new, something that Arthur wasn’t sure he had ever seen make the light of day. “I love you. I hate Dutch. Dutch treated you – and us – but mostly you – like shit. And Hosea died in that storm and that wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t’ve stopped it from happening. And you’re doing a good thing with your siren thing and now you have your weather box back to make it even better and to make sure you don’t die on me yet. So there.” Punctuated all those dizzy revelations with a petal soft kiss that wasn’t like John’s wildness but something that was more so for the quiet pulses in the night, in the amber flickers at the end of a cigarette, in the strange stillness after a storm.

Arthur swallowed and rubbed at his eyes that were dripping rivers again. Petal soft again, John kissed their tracks away.

And Arthur, god, he didn’t know what to do.

Everything in him was spinning and relearning and just bursting.

The duster revealing things in his brain he hadn’t dared touch, had even forgotten about, no, abandoned. 

But revealed now, Arthur breathed in, out, and felt John’s words, mulled and chewed them over.

And okay, John had won. He was right.

He couldn’t’ve saved Hosea. He had only been a kid when that storm had taken him. Had only been a kid when he decided saving people with properly timed warnings was gonna be his mission to somehow atone for the things he couldn’t’ve stopped from happening anyway. But try he would. 

Had only been a kid when Dutch had heard of his new proclamation on his life and had soured it to fit his own needs. Go on kid, be my eye and use that weather that’s got your head all in a dizzy tizzy, and tell these people to leave so daddy can go and rob them of their money and pawn off their possessions. 

Had only been a kid when Dutch had swiped John off the streets and had fed him, Arthur’s soon to be sun, the same foolish bullshit. Had only been a man teetering on the edge of adulthood when he had fallen into bed with John, never staying for too long, but always holding so tightly on to the only good thing that somehow came back around and felt less like a verbal or physical beating and more of something beautiful, picturesque, so awful in its full of aweness, Nature-esque. 

But was now a man.

Choosing now as he had done in that bathroom.

But now with John before him, barrier-less. 

Real. Tangible. Warm. 

Arthur sunk into John, rested his head on the boy’s shoulders and said all what was in his head bursting in just a few words, “I love you too.” And added the one thing he’d never done, “Stay?”

John turned that word into a statement. “Stay, he asks.” Kissed his stupid slack mouth with a final, “Of course, idiot.” 

And when Arthur’s blinks against John’s neck got slower and slower, John teased, so sweet and warm despite it being a bit of a pester, “Should’ve made you drink more of that coffee.” 

And sleep came easy then.

The eye blinked and fell and bowed to the impending awe of the raging sun and not to the man that thought he’d be able to control it all.

Yes, stay.

Stay.

Found.


End file.
